Friday, July 28, 2006

"Poland's navy said a sunken shipwreck in the Baltic Sea is almost certainly Nazi Germany's only aircraft carrier - the Graf Zeppelin, which disappeared nearly 60 years ago.

The Polish oil company Petrobaltic discovered the shipwreck July 12 on the sea floor about 40 miles north of the port city of Gdansk. Suspecting it could be the wreckage of the Graf Zeppelin, the Polish Navy sent a survey vessel to inspect it earlier this week, Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Bartosz Zajda said Thursday.

'We are 99 percent sure - even 99.9 percent - that these details point unambiguously to the Graf Zeppelin,' said Dariusz Beczek, the commander of the survey vessel.

The Graf Zeppelin was Germany's only aircraft carrier during World War II. It was launched in 1938, but never saw action due to Hitler's disenchantment with his navy and political squabbles in the Nazi high command. After Germany's defeat in 1945, the Soviet Union took control of the ship."